Do you have a family heirloom sitting around gathering dust? Curious about the ancestor who owned it? Are you trying to find some ways to interest your teen in family history? Introduce them to this month's Instagram challenge at makefamilyhistory.org and watch the magic begin. Teens love social media. Combine that with a fascinating family heirloom and you've got them hooked. I don't have any teens left at home, but I am helping a group of teens from my church learn how to do family history. This looked like a fun activity, so I encouraged them to give it...

Today, we have a guest post by one of our readers, Lindsey Crouch. Lindsey found our post about teaching youth to use census records, then adapted it for a younger age group. She’s here to share her documents and lesson plan so anyone can recreate the activity to teach children about census records. Enjoy! -Nicole ---- Hi, I'm Lindsey I'm originally from Idaho and graduated from Utah State in social work. I'm a life-long learner and a mom to a 2-year-old boy. I only started doing family history research about a year and a half ago, and I’m glad I finally got on board. My...

According to D. Joshua Taylor at the Green Valley (AZ) Genealogical Society seminar yesterday, the stereotypical genealogist is a 65 year old white female. He learned this when he dedicated a separate web browser for his genealogy google searches only. Google built a profile based on these searches to target him for advertisements. He found out from friends at google that google thought he was a 65 year old white female. We got a good laugh out of this story - especially since 95% of the seminar attendees matched this profile. Family History is for Everyone I think google...

Today I'm sharing my favorite blog posts and genealogy news from around the web. I am especially fascinated by the Wall Street Journal piece about growing heirloom variety flowers - the same varieties your ancestors may have grown. I looked at some heirloom flower seed packets at our local nursery today, but decided I needed to scour my family stories for mentions of plants before I buy any. Also, I'm looking forward to the History Channel's remake of the mini-series "Roots," based on the 1976 book by Alex Haley. Although Haley was charged with plagiarism and also admitted that parts of the book were "faction," Roots inspired millions of...

Have you ever read a family history with an interesting fact, like "Great Grandma was a full blooded Cherokee"? You're excited to read more and see some proof, but there is nothing: no source citations or documentation of any kind. You're left in the dark, wondering how much to believe in that history. Eliza Ann Isenhour My great grandmother, Eliza Ann Isenhour, supposedly sported Cherokee heritage. Unfortunately, the family history stating this fact neglected to state any proof. Nicole and I researched Eliza's parents, found that she actually belonged to the Eisenhour clan, and through that connection discovered our relationship to President...

Need a way to share family stories with your kids more often? How about coloring pages? Every so often, we create a coloring page about one of our grandparents. While my son was coloring one of his Great Grandpa Elder today, he remembered that Great Grandpa passed away last year. He talked about missing him and wondered what he looked like when he was younger. As he thought about it, he colored this picture of Grandpa in the army. We talked about Grandpa's life and some of the stories he told. Ready to make your own? Many photo editing programs have a way to convert...

Do you look like one of your grandparents? Do you have one of their dresses or coats? Then you might have fun doing this photo challenge from www.makefamilyhistory.org : recreate an ancestor photo. My daughter Alice now has my pink baby sweater knitted by my Grandma. I showed her a picture of me wearing the sweater and she instantly wanted to put it on. We pulled a mini Christmas tree out of storage and... done! We recreated the photo. Want to see some more? Check out their Recreate an Ancestor Photo Instagram challenge page. It shows the winners of their contest from last year....

In honor of Presidents Day today, I thought I would pose the question - are you related to one of the presidents of the United States? I found out I was related to Dwight D. Eisenhower when I first started researching my Grandpa Shults' side 14 years ago. My 3rd great grandmother, Eliza Ann Isenhour, was his third cousin. As you can see, the spelling of the last name morphed over the years. Doris Kearns Goodwin, at her RootsTech conference keynote address last week, spoke about how she had basically no living relatives as a young person and didn't know...

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